Dear Phenix experts, we encounter the following "problem" when trying to refine alternating conformations: we have a complex with 4 chemically different polypeptide chains in the asymmetric unit, composition A3B3CD. For chains C and D we see additional density, which appears to belong to three alternating conformations which can be thought as rigid-body motions (for the whole chains C and D, let's call these conformers 1,2 and 3, but we label them conventionally in the file with the prefix A,B,and C) with roughly estimated occupancies of about 0.3, 0.3 and 0.4 (we can really see most of them). A and B have no visible alternating conformations (occupancies set to 1.0). From the atom count it appears that phenix reads in three conformers called A,B and C with A: A3B3C(1)D(1), B: A3B3C(2)D(2) and C: A3B3C(3)D(3). Phenix.refine says it has these 3 conformers: conformer A A:2700 atoms, conformer B:2700 atoms, common with A 2100, conformer C:2700 atoms, common with A 2100, common with B 2100. Refinement yields an R/Rfree of about 0.210/0.325. If we treat the three conformers of polypeptide chains C and D as independent chains with occupancy each 1.0 (this is possible 'cos there are no repulsive contacts between them, fortunately), we get R/Rfree of 0.243/0.291 and phenix applies NCS restraints to all chains. The resolution is about 2.9 A. We use phenix.refine from the CCI_APPS, version 2007-03-26-1903, SUSE Linux. My questions is: is the difference due to the lack of NCS between conformers or are the occupancies mistreated somwhow? I am asking because I would not consider the whole A3B3C(x)D(x) particle as a conformer but only chains C and D ...... Is there a possibility to apply NCS restraints to conformers? Many thanks in advance, Ulrich